[nycbug-talk] BSD Cluster Filesystem Roundup

[Andy Kosela]

Miles Nordin <carton at ivy.net> wrote:

> What exactly was the cluster filesystem in Tru64 though?  I hope you
> are not just talking about DCE/DFS?

No.  DFS was just a network file system and last time I heard about it
was from IBM.  Tru64 is using TruCluster ported from VMS' VMScluster
which offered truly SSI clustering.  Linux with OpenSSI or Kerrighed is
not even close to this old DEC/Compaq technology.

  http://h30097.www3.hp.com/unix/reliabilityvsavailability.htm

> I'm not sure VMS clusters will be a helpful guide because weren't they
> meant to be only two or three nodes because the machines running VMS
> were so big?  Such design would be completely different from the
> hundreds-of-nodes clusters people are interested in now.

The main goals would still remain the same: single root, single process
space, single I/O and IPC space, virtual network address space - all
those features were available on VMS more than 20 years ago!

Matt Dillon announced that Dragonfly BSD will be SSI ready in the
future.  I really hope so, because BSD systems are really lacking in
this area.  Linux at least has OpenSSI.

--Andy